


The Right Way

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A little angst, AU, Fluff, M/M, My Cat From Hell AU, Past Relationships, Pets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4858556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has a cat problem and Benny is here to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Way

**Author's Note:**

> This is a silly premise and you can all laugh at me but 1) I really love Dean/Benny 2) I really love cats.
> 
> Dean's cat is a silver somali. The title is based off phrase "rubbed me the wrong way" but I thought it'd be tacky to have the word "rub" in the title of a fic that only has a G rating. But hopefully a rating boost will happen in the future because I want to write something for once where Dean and Benny have sex, dammit.

“How long have you had Maggie?”

The low, smooth tug of the stranger’s voice draws Dean’s attention away from the sneaky grey feline slowly prowling behind the sofa, her tail disappearing into the shadows. When he looks up, he’s struck again by the man’s appearance. Benny is definitely not the squirrely old cat fanatic Dean had expected him to be, but Jo, who remains his only supporter when it comes to Dean's cat problem, told him about this guy. She assured Dean that he was good at the cat thing, that he’s written books about them and gone on TV about it. But when Dean met him at the door, him standing there in a battered old peacoat with a navy blue duffel bag stuffed full of god-knows-what kind of cat junk slung over his shoulder, a siren started going off in Dean’s head. Jo neglected to mention a few things, namely that Benny was handsome and bearded and exactly Dean’s type.

Seated in the living room of Dean’s home now, Dean makes a valiant effort to keep from staring at the man’s kind, strikingly blue eyes, so he stares elsewhere. He stares at Benny's hands. The man is a little bit shorter than Dean, but makes up for it in overall thickness, right down to these short, wide fingers with gorgeous knuckles that he keeps laced together in his lap and that, as it happens, Dean is finding a hell of a lot more distracting than his eyes. Benny doesn’t comment on Dean’s impropriety, however, if he even notices.

He hasn’t taken off the funny little cap, either, but Dean figures it’s part of his _deal._ Part of his charmingly quaint down-south cat-whispering deal.

“Dean?”

“Uh…” Dean croaks and then clears his throat, “about six years, I guess. We got her from a shelter when she was almost a year old.”

“’We’?”

“Yeah, me and my ex. It was supposed to be a test, you know?”

Benny’s eyes narrow slightly when Dean says that. Judgy. _Great_ , “A test?”

“Testing our _commitment,_ ” the word sours on Dean's tongue.

Benny waits a beat with a growing look of amusement on his face.

“We failed.”

Smirking faintly but nodding his head, Benny scribbles something on a pale yellow notepad, “Not that it’s my business, but did you break up because of the cat?”

Dean chuckles, a tumble of noise that he wishes didn’t sound so bitter. It’s been five months. He shouldn’t be this bitter about it, still, “Nah. The cat wasn’t the problem,” he replies, straining to keep his tone friendly, “I mean, she was a little shit when we were still dating but we both knew it was one of those sixth-sense things that animals have, you know?”

“Explain it to me anyway.”

“Um,” Dean looks to Benny’s left, at the wall behind the sofa. Maggie is still behind there somewhere. Biding her time, waiting to strike. The back of it is clawed to hell, another one of Maggie’s victims, and Dean suspects she’s found a way to actually burrow inside the piece of furniture like a little dragon sleeping in a lair, “The cat started to act up the more we fought. Not just making a mess everywhere but scratching up furniture, attacking either of us if we tried to pet her, howling like she's hurt or something at night time,” Dean explains, “It makes sense, right? We were supposed to be her dads and kids don’t like listening to their parents argue, so they find ways to…I don’t know,” Dean puts his hands together in his lap.

“That’s okay,” Benny replies, “That’s what I’m here for, right? To figure out what you don’t know, and how we can make it better,” he says and sits closer to the edge of the sofa as Maggie appears on the other side, tail alert and bright green-gold eyes fixed on the stranger in the room, “Isn’t she a beauty?”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean admits with a small smile as they both watch Maggie as she takes a few cautious steps into the open. Maggie was a unanimous pick, the one thing he and Cas agreed on instantly. Neither of them knew much about cats, which was probably where their problems began, but Dean hasn’t seen another cat yet that he thinks is prettier than Maggie, her long silvery fur giving her an almost wild look, but her fluffy tail adds a grace that softens her appearance into something that Dean can’t help but admire. Even if she’s clawing the shit out of everything he owns.

“She’s a looker. Just like her dad.”

The cat whisperer looks up at Dean’s remark and snorts. Dean reddens immediately and mentally slaps himself in the forehead. _This isn’t high school prom. Get it together._

“Forget I said that.”

To Dean’s vague horror, Benny can’t seem to hide the upward twist to his mouth, but he appears to pity Dean’s broken filter enough and turns his attention back down to Maggie, who's flicking her tail moodily, and sitting next to Dean's armchair as if she's grudgingly accepted that she depends on him to get rid of the strange person in their home. Benny seems to think _that's_ funny, too, and asks, “Do you mind if I introduce myself to her?”

Dean, still blushing and peering over the arm of his chair at his cat, shakes his head jerkily, wondering if he could brain himself on the coffee table once Benny is busy enough with Maggie, “Go right ahead.”

Nodding in thanks, Benny says “Hey, Maggie,” as he slowly slides off the sofa and onto the carpet. His voice is naturally gentle already, but when he talks now, he layers it with an extra soothing tone that settles warmly in Dean’s belly. But then Benny whistles softly and makes a ridiculous kissy noise and the cat’s ears twitch in interest, and Dean remembers, _oh yeah,_ that’s his cat whispering voice, “I won’t hurt you, sweetheart. I just wanna say hello.”

Maggie is a statue, watching Benny’s approach with wide, unblinking eyes, her ears flattened to the top of her head. She looks freaked, but Dean can’t remember the last time Maggie really looked at someone that way, like she just wasn’t sure about what to do about them. Typically, she knows _exactly_ what to do with just about everybody in Dean’s life, whether it’s Dean or his foster sister, Jo, or Sam or his landlord, Pamela, and that’s hiss and growl and lunge with the claws out in an instant if they come within three feet of her personal space. But all Benny did was speak to her gently and make a few funny noises, and Maggie is reassessing her entire arsenal of reactions.

When Maggie’s ears lift into a neutral position, Dean says, “Dude, that it some real magi—”

“Shh,” Benny cuts Dean off softly, and takes off his hat without taking his eyes off Maggie. He extends the hat to Maggie, and Dean expects her to lash out at him _now,_ maybe even steal his hat and drag it back to her den, but after ten or so seconds of indecision, she stretches her neck out and delicately sniffs the air around the hat, whiskers twitching as she greets Benny’s scent. When she looks at Benny instead of the hat, Benny smiles and says, “’Atta girl.”

And then, Maggie suddenly recoils back on herself and scoots off into the kitchen.

“Hm,” Benny sits back on his knees and watches after the cat as she hides around the kitchen island, “She’s definitely careful.”

“She’s usually not…” Dean starts to speak but trails off in a small chuckle when Maggie pokes her head around the corner again to see if Benny’s still there, “I'm surprised she hasn’t assaulted you yet.”

Benny laughs warmly at that, puts his hat back on and takes his seat again on the sofa, “So she’s usually a fighter?”

“Claws out, paws swinging,” Dean replies, “She'll go after anything that moves,” He really shouldn’t try so hard to make Benny laugh, but the sound is addicting and Dean digs the idea of saying things that make Benny happy, things that make him like Dean despite his failure as a cat owner.

“How often do you get attacked by Maggie? Let's say, in a week?”

“Badly?” Dean asks, and Benny nods so he answers with a small sigh, “I’d say she latches onto an arm or an ankle probably three or four times a week, but she likes to take a swipe at me whenever I get too close to her,” he says, “I’ve adapted. I wear my shoes around the house and buy thicker socks.”

Benny listens intently but he doesn’t laugh this time, “Ever go to the emergency room after an attack?”

“A couple times,” Dean shrugs.

Benny goes “Hm,” again and then makes solid eye contact with Dean, so frank and earnest that Dean draws back in his seat a bit and forgets to breathe for a moment, “I’m not here to judge you, so I want an honest answer now: Have you thought about getting rid of Maggie?”

Dean knew the question was going to come up eventually but it closes tight around his heart anyway and he instinctively glances back into the kitchen as if Maggie will understand however he answers Benny. She’s nowhere in sight, though, likely still camped out behind the island, trying to figure out how the hell she can gain an upper hand, so he turns to face Benny’s intense stare, “Yes.”

“Back to a shelter?”

“Well, I can’t just give her up to someone I know. Not when I know and they know what she’s like,” Dean replies defensively, “I thought of taking her back to a shelter, yeah. And I know that…I know that if she ended up there again, nobody will ever adopt her. Not at her age or with her personality,” Dean explains and lets his eyes fall to the clawed up leg of the coffee table, a bit of nausea expanding in his gut the same as it always does whenever he contemplates giving Maggie up, “But I still thought about it.”

Dean pulls his fingers through his hair and keeps his eyes trained on the table. The table that Maggie destroyed, the one that his foster sister built from scratch and that nearly drove Dean to just put Maggie out on the street, screw the shelter. Now that _that’s_ out in the open, he feels a lot less perturbed by how off the rails his life is that he had to call in a damn _cat whisperer_ to help him make things right, and more crushed by the weight of his guilt for how he’s badly he’s failed Maggie that he’d almost gotten rid of her more than a few times, knowing full well what would likely happen to her in the long run if he did.

“Dean” Benny says finally, sitting forward on his seat again as he tries to recapture Dean’s gaze by tilting his head at an angle. Dean lets himself be drawn to it, caving under the pressure to let someone show him how to do something right for once.

Benny’s expression is heavy with sincerity when he speaks, “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you held on.”


End file.
